White Lokta Paper

The size is; Length 51 cm Height 75 cm and Grammage:  60g/m2

Nepalese lokta paper is made from the fibers of the inner bark, generally two species of evergreen shrubs are used, (Daphne papyracea and Daphne bholua) that grow at high altitude, on the southern slope of the Nepalese Himalayas, between 1600 and 4000 meters.

The oldest surviving lokta paper document appears in the National Archives of Nepal in Kathmandu in the form of a Buddhist sacred text, the Karanya Buha Sutra. The Karanya Buha Sutra was written in Lichchhavi script and block-printed on lokta paper and is estimated to be between 1000 and 1900 years old.

Historically this paper has been handcrafted in rural areas of Nepal, since around the year 1000, especially in the Baglung district.
With the introduction of craft paper imports from Tibet in the 1930s, the production of handmade lokta paper began to decline. In the 1960s, competition from commercial mass-produced paper from India put the Nepalese craft paper industry in a state of terminal decline with only a few families in Baglung and the neighboring Parbat district retaining traditional knowledge of the production of artisan paper lokta.

To make the paper, the bark is cooked, then the fibers are cleaned and beaten, to finally shape the sheet. To form it, the fibers are dumped into a former and distributed well, then the form is removed from the water and left to dry in the sun.